[ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 24

Wed Dec 30 12:55:47 PST 2015

I'm sorry to say that everyone is missing the point: ALL writers "borrrow" "steal" "plagiarise" "plunder" "copy" or whatever degreee of culpable offence you care to name and they do it for three very basic reasons: 1) they are humans and 2) all writers are telling their own story and 3) they (we) are all liars. We all do it when writing and we all do it when we are in the so-called "real" world. How many of you (I notice everyone writing here is a man) have not lied to your wife - maybe on some little thing, more likely on some big thing. And how many of you have lied to yourselves??? The answer is "very often" "too often" "just often enough" on exactly the same scale of culpability, 
No doubt it is worse (more culpable) for an acdemic to steal someone else's research and to pass it off as one's own, than for a novelist to lift a description from another book (novel, poem, history, biography, work of philosophy) and put it into his own book in the words of a narrator, another character, or as a piece of descriptive prose. If you think LD was the only one to do it, then either stop blaming and finding fault with him, OR STOP READING HIM. If it's a disillusion that LD did it ALL THE TIME then I'm sorry for your troubles.
Academics should try living in the real world - or to put it another way, take their heads out of books and confront reality, or let reality confront THEM. But they live, not in ivory towers (the grants for those stopped some years ago) but in hermetically sealed cardboard boxes labelled "Go away I'm not interested in the truth" and on the other side "Keep out! No reality here!" That's why so many academics' wives have affairs.
A copyright question for your bedtime puzzle: "Tout un monde lointain" is the title of a work (commonly referred to as a cello concerto) by Henri Dutilleux. But those words are lifted, without acknowledgement, from a fellow Frenchman. If you don't know whose words they are, you should, but it doesn't matter. Does this "theft" of those 4 words invalidate the composition? Think about it: those who pursue authors punitively for their borrowings would have to castigate Dutilleux and refuse to listen to the work - a work, like the Alex Quartet, that is peculiarly beautiful. But surely it CANNOT be beautiful if it's founded on a lie???? Get REAL!!!!
And when it comes to people being trustworthy (and I'm sure no-one on this list would claim to being trustworthy) I'm surprised that what I wrote recently about my personal circumstances (written in an unwise moment to clarify this very point of the lack of a border between the real and the imagined, between truth and untruth, between what happens in "real" life and what happens in books) was leaked outside this list. The person who did so is, as I already knew, untrustworthy but making public what I stupidly assumed to be a privte admission is, in my opinion, worse than copying out someone else's work and claiming it as one's own.
RP
-----Original Message-----
From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2015 09:00 PM
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 24

Send ILDS mailing list submissions to	ilds at lists.uvic.caTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit	https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ildsor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to	ilds-request at lists.uvic.caYou can reach the person managing the list at	ilds-owner at lists.uvic.caWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."Today's Topics: 1. Re: Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de Menasce (Bruce Redwine) 2. Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 23 (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org) 3. Fwd: Plagiarism (William Apt) 4. Re: Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de Menasce (James Gifford) 5. Copyright (Bruce Redwine) 6. Re: Mustapha Marrouchi and Lawrence Durrell (Bruce Redwine)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 12:45:52 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford ,	James Gifford	Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: Re: [ilds] Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de MenasceMessage-ID: <7B9FA5BC-2E2C-41DF-9EEC-39FD03C41D5B at earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"James,I?ve no idea what Rex Warner would have said (or did somewhere) about Durrell?s appropriation of a long passage from his translation of Xenophon?s Anabasis. You?re probably right?he would have been gracious and not raised a fuss. In my view, however, Durrell made a big mistake. He should have found a way to credit Warner?s work (and there are always ways to do that, however subtle and indirect). For example, at the back of Justine, Durrell?s ?Notes in the Text? cites other sources. Why not Warner? Perhaps because Rex Warner, he ?of all people? fame, didn?t rank alongside Cavafy, Forster, and Paracelsus? My point?Lawrence Durrell is sometimes snobbish. He prefers to credit sources which authenticate his own genius and creativity. This seems to me defensive?driven by the lack of an Oxbridge degree, which Warner had?What I was taught (and you were too) was that plagiarism included using, without documentation, someone else?s words and ideas. That standard still applies in academia (so Marrouchi?s problems) but not apparently among some of today?s writers. Years ago, I mentioned on the List a New York Times article on the young German writer Helene Hegemann. She was found to have plagiarized large chunks of another writer?s work. Her response: she was merely ?mixing.? That is, as Nicholas Kulish reveals, Hegemann ?defended herself as the representative of a different generation, one that freely mixes and matches from the whirring flood of information across new and old media, to create something new? (12 Feb. 2010). Lawrence Durrell was sometimes a ?mixer? and may have been in the vanguard of a new movement.Bruce> On Dec 29, 2015, at 10:06 AM, James Gifford  wrote:> > On 2015-12-28 10:35 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:>> As to the ?of all people? characterization of Rex Warner on Michael>> Haag?s blog, I?ll note that Warner was a well-known and highly>> productive classicist from Oxford. Among his translations of Latin and>> Greek authors was /Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War/>> (1954), which became a bestseller for Penguin, over a million copies>> sold. My first exposure to Thucydides was from Warner?s translation,>> and I remember it fondly> > For what it's worth (and I think we've discussed this online before), Nessim's historical dreams are created out of Warner's translation of the Anabasis. Would Warner, whom Durrell knew, have seen this as theft or a tribute to his own excellent work? I suspect the latter, but I wonder if his library is extant and what marginalia might be in his copy of the Quartet.> > I recently acquired some of Rona Murray's Durrell books from her library, so the next time I'm in Victoria I plan to see what may be hiding in her papers... At the Louisville conference in February, I'll be talking about how H. D.'s readings in the Quartet shaped some of her interesting late work.> > > I would like to know what the committee at UNLV> > meant by finding ?similarities with other works.?> > I was recently talking to a law professor who> > specializes in Intellectual Property, and she> > mentioned (if I heard her right) that under U.S.> > copyright law a writer?s words are protected but> > not his/her ideas. I assume the people at UNLV> > knew what they were doing and nailed Marrouchi> > for pilfering the actual words of assorted> > writers without proper accreditation. In this> > regard, scholars are sometimes held to a higher> > standard than creative writers.> > I'd imagine it was the issue of a "higher standard" rather than direct copying verbatim. If an academic rewrites an article's findings entirely in his or her own words (not plagiarism) but without attribution and claiming the ideas to be his or her own, it could certainly be understood as misconduct even if it's perfectly legal. My understanding is that in the USA there are elements of ideas that can be protected by copyright even if words are not directly stolen.> > As for copyright and plagiarism in academia, I'd imagine there would need to be some form of damages for such things to proceed to court, and given the context, I would think "damage" would be more likely to be demonstrated by the publishers than the authors of the original works. Can I sue over the French translation of /Pied Piper of Lovers/ copying from my editorial apparatus without attribution? Not likely since I don't earn anything from it...> > All best,> James-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 2Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 20:51:01 +0000From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.orgTo: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 23Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii""students and some academics value career advancement over contributions to knowledge and nurturing learning. " - You bet they do, as I know very well. I have seen student essays in which the student, having lifted quotes from Wikipedia, didn't even bother to change the font!!! So much for intelligence, but (to be cynical) full marks for the effort to further their career. Since most academic work in the humanities at least, is paltry and contributes very little to knowledge or nurturing learning, it doesn't really matter whether or not they are cheating on each other - they haven't the spunk to cheat on each other in sexual matters, so they resort to doing it with other body parts - the body of the text organically transplanted fgrom one book to another. So much more cosy. Which in my experience is what a very high proportion of academics do too. Cheating doesn't stop when you get your BA or even your PhD. I have seen respectable books by academics anxious for "advancement"! which show that their principal motive is NOT contributing to knowledge or nurturing learning - far from it, simply remarketing someone else's work as one's own. It can be done cleverly so that no-one notices. But all that relates to students and their teachers. What LD (and so many others) do is a completely different game. I'm reading Sisman's life of le Carre at present and it's clear that there are times when David Cornwell didn't know what le Carre was writing, or couldn't in his recollection distinguish between what "really" happened and what le Carre has written. And other times when he did know.I think it's remarkable that this discussion (LD's plagiarism) has gone on for so long before anyone mentioned the words "copyright" or "intellectual property". The laws on copyright are so fexible and vague that anyone can run rings round them. And they do.RP-----Original Message-----From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca]Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2015 09:00 PMTo: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 23Send ILDS mailing list submissions to	ilds at lists.uvic.caTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit	https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ildsor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to	ilds-request at lists.uvic.caYou can reach the person managing the list at	ilds-owner at lists.uvic.caWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."Today's Topics: 1. Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 22 (mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org) 2. Mustapha Marrouchi and Lawrence Durrell (Bruce Redwine) 3. Re: Mustapha Marrouchi and Lawrence Durrell (James Gifford) 4. Re: Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de Menasce (James Gifford)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2015 20:47:56 +0000From: mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.orgTo: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 22Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"Mustapha Marouchi certa! inly made a good impression when he attended the Durrell School some years ago, but he did and does seem "plausible" and it does not surprise me that he has been detected "borrowing" - but is there a distinction to be made between plagiarism in academic work (i.e presenting others' work as one's own) which is rife among students these days (as Dr Gifford knows to his cost) and taking bits from others' books and putting them into one's novels and other imaginative fiction(as LD did , as we know, In Prospero's Cell (from Sophie Atkinson) and in Caesar's Vast Ghost (from...?).As far as plausibility is concerned, Marouchi would not be the only chancer, plagiarist and thief who has graced the Durrell School - some escaped detection at the time, others were so transparent as to defy arrest. Takes all sorts...RP-----Original Message-----From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca]Sent: Monday, December 28, 2015 09:01 PMTo: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: ILDS Di! gest, Vol 104, Issue 22Send ILDS mailing list submissions to	ilds at lists.uvic.caTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit	https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ildsor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to	ilds-request at lists.uvic.caYou can reach the person managing the list at	ilds-owner at lists.uvic.caWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."Today's Topics: 1. Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de Menasce (James Gifford) 2. Re: Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de Menasce (Bruce Redwine)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2015 16:59:34 -0800From: James Gifford To: ILDS Listserv Subject: [ilds] Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de MenasceMessage-ID: <56808976.9010003 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowedHello all,This post from Michael Haag might be of interest!http://michaelhaag.blogspot.ca/2015/12/nessim-hosnani-in-lawrence-durre! lls.htmlAnd just for Bruce, a dastardly bit o! n Mustapha Marrouchi writing on Edward Said:http://michaelhaag.blogspot.ca/2015/11/beyond-limit-with-mustapha-marrouchi.htmlThe revelations on Marrouchi to which Michael refers are here:http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/education/unlv-fires-professor-accused-serial-plagiarism(as an aside, the article on "Blodgett" in which Marrouchi's plagiarism was detected is Ted Blodgett from my alma mater, the University of Alberta -- the journal that published the piece is known for having especially rigorous peer review, so this is a real surprise)Just for the record, I've previously pointed out that Marrouchi's /Edward Said at the Limits/ is missing citations to works from which it quotes... I wrote to him in March 2006 (I didn't attend the DSC seminars he was in), and he told me it was in reference to Said's private papers that he'd read in Said's office, but now I'm wondering if that was just invented. It appears unreliable narrators are! ubiquitous these days!All best,James-------! -----------------------Message: 2Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2015 10:35:33 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford ,	James Gifford	Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: Re: [ilds] Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de MenasceMessage-ID: <03EF33F2-93A3-4D76-8114-A0E67CFCF5EC at earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"As to the ?of all people? characterization of Rex Warner on Michael Haag?s blog, I?ll note that Warner was a well-known and highly productive classicist from Oxford. Among his translations of Latin and Greek authors was Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War (1954), which became a bestseller for Penguin, over a million copies sold. My first exposure to Thucydides was from Warner?s translation, and I remember it fondly, although the Thomas Hobbes?s translation endures as another classic in 17th-century English. Warner made a most difficult author highly readable in modern English. He may be forgiven for a slight work on English public schools, probably written to pick up a few coins, as writers ! are sometimes wont to do.As to Mustapha Ma! rrouchi and his problems, the breadth of the charge of ?serial? plagiarism is staggering, but I would like to know what the committee at UNLV meant by finding ?similarities with other works.? I was recently talking to a law professor who specializes in Intellectual Property, and she mentioned (if I heard her right) that under U.S. copyright law a writer?s words are protected but not his/her ideas. I assume the people at UNLV knew what they were doing and nailed Marrouchi for pilfering the actual words of assorted writers without proper accreditation. In this regard, scholars are sometimes held to a higher standard than creative writers. Michael will recall that Lawrence Durrell stole a whole chunk of his words in Caesar?s Vast Ghost without some much as a by-your-leave. For which he could have been taken to court. Durrell made a habit of such ?borrowings.? And no, because Shakespeare did it, doesn?t mean that old LD was allowed to d! o so. Copyright la! ws didn?t exist in E! ngland during Shakespeare?s time.Bruce> On Dec 27, 2015, at 4:59 PM, James Gifford wrote:> > Hello all,> > This post from Michael Haag might be of interest!> > http://michaelhaag.blogspot.ca/2015/12/nessim-hosnani-in-lawrence-durrells.html> > And just for Bruce, a dastardly bit on Mustapha Marrouchi writing on Edward Said:> > http://michaelhaag.blogspot.ca/2015/11/beyond-limit-with-mustapha-marrouchi.html> > The revelations on Marrouchi to which Michael refers are here:> > http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/education/unlv-fires-professor-accused-serial-plagiarism> > (as an aside, the article on "Blodgett" in which Marrouchi's plagiarism was detected is Ted Blodgett from my alma mater, the University of Alberta -- the journal that published the piece is known for having especially rigorous peer review, so this is a real surprise)> > Just for the record, I've previously pointed out that Marrouchi's /Edward Said at the Limits/ is missing citations to works from which it quotes... I wrote to him in March 200! 6 (I didn't attend the DSC seminars he ! was in), and he told me it was in reference to Said's private papers that he'd read in Said's office, but now I'm wondering if that was just invented. It appears unreliable narrators are ubiquitous these days!> > All best,> James> _______________________________________________-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Subject: Digest Footer_______________________________________________ILDS mailing listILDS at lists.uvic.cahttps://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds------------------------------End of ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 22*************************************-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 2Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2015 17:17:45 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: [ilds] Mustapha Marrouchi and Lawrence DurrellMessage-ID: <08EB34A9-CFAE-43D0-BC53-DA401A67B66C at earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/pl! ain; charset="utf-8"It takes all sorts, indeed. Durrell?s ?use? of his sources, if you will, has been discussed extensively on this listserv. Since it?s once again coming up, we can agree that there?s little, if any, agreement. My view is that Durrell plagiarized material in Prospero?s Cell, Balthazar, and Caesar?s Vast Ghost, to name only three egregious examples. He did this deliberately, in my opinion. I don?t know if he himself considered it a ?crime??that I doubt, for he seems to have forgotten what were actually his own words and what were someone else?s. I think, however, that had he been found out at the time he would have run into big problems with his publishers, Faber in particular. Why? Because there is a big difference between dropping witty allusions (? la the High Moderns) and the theft (in bits or chunks) of some other writer?s prose. It appears that Marrouchi indulged in the latter. Durrell?s practice is open to debate.Bruce> On Dec 28, 2015, at 12:47 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org wrote:> > Mustapha Marouchi certainly made ! a good impression when he attended the Durrell School some years ago, but he did and does seem "plausible" and it does not surprise me that he has been detected "borrowing" - but is there a distinction to be made between plagiarism in academic work (i.e presenting others' work as one's own) which is rife among students these days (as Dr Gifford knows to his cost) and taking bits from others' books and putting them into one's novels and other imaginative fiction(as LD did , as we know, In Prospero's Cell (from Sophie Atkinson) and in Caesar's Vast Ghost (from...?).> As far as plausibility is concerned, Marouchi would not be the only chancer, plagiarist and thief who has graced the Durrell School - some escaped detection at the time, others were so transparent as to defy arrest. Takes all sorts...> RP-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 3Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 09:51:43 -0800From: James Gifford To:! ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] Mustapha Marrouchi and Lawrence DurrellMessage-ID: <5682C82F.7020509 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowedHi Bruce,As it happens, I'm going through Caesar's Vast Ghost fairly carefully just now -- I think some of the hints are in the references to "commonplace books." Durrell's project around this time in the Notebooks of Demonax suggest his move from the Quintet to a novel that works aphoristically. His method involved moving from his quarry books the novel by shoring up fragments (to borrow from one of those High Moderns). By the later parts of his career, I think he just wanted to let the fragments be on their own and leave the shoring to the reader. The rightly egregious theft from Haag in /Caesar/ strikes me as a product of his carelessness (and editorial help) in the process of moving from commonplace book to "book" book. He wasn't interested in it at that point, and informally some suggest it wasn't a book entirely of his own concoction too.I tend not to be as worr! ied about things in the Quartet. The notebook method is the same, and I'm generally inclined to see it as allusive more than theft, although I understand your point. Students will often tell me they copied a quotation and then forgot it was a quotation while revising, mistaking it for their own writing -- when the student's writing is very weak and the quotation is excellent, I find that harder to believe, especially in a very short essay in which the thefts make up the majority of the work... For Durrell, looking at the notebooks, where the copied portions are more on the order of sentences rather than pages, the movement from commonplace book or quarry book to final novel strikes me as a combination of allusion and method. "Be ye part of one another" or books made up of spare parts. Kathy Acker made an art of it (including lifting from Durrell).What I don't see in Durrell is the scenario of setting a book beside his typewriter to lift passages into this novel draft... Tha! t looks a lot more like what Marrouchi appears to have done, or even more likely, cut & paste from the internet.Unfortunately, the instrumentalization of learning in the neoliberal university has prioritized advancement (the code word for endowment growth), and that makes students and some academics value career advancement over contributions to knowledge and nurturing learning. In the UK, the "productivity" measures even include how many times an article is cited as a measure for advancement -- yet citations saying "this article is rubbish" still count in that quantified measure, so being debunked extensively is a good career move! Happy, Canada and the USA haven't created such a national system (yet), but we have our own set of troubles in academia too.All best,JamesOn 2015-12-28 5:17 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:> It takes all sorts, indeed. Durrell?s ?use? of his sources, if you> will, has been discussed extensively on this listserv. Since it?s once> again coming up, we can agree that there?s little, if any, agreement.> My view is that Durrell ! plagiarized material in /Prospero?s Cell,> Balthazar,/ and /Caesar?s Vast Ghost,/ to name only three egregious> examples. He did this deliberately, in my opinion. I don?t know if he> himself considered it a ?crime??that I doubt, for he seems to have> forgotten what were actually his own words and what were someone else?s.> I think, however, that had he been found out at the time he would have> run into big problems with his publishers, Faber in particular. Why?> Because there is a big difference between dropping witty allusions (?> la the High Moderns) and the theft (in bits or chunks) of some other> writer?s prose. It appears that Marrouchi indulged in the latter.> Durrell?s practice is open to debate.>> Bruce>>>>>> On Dec 28, 2015, at 12:47 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org>> wrote:>>>> Mustapha Marouchi certainly made a good impression when he attended>> the Durrell School some years ago, but he did and does seem>> "plausible" and it does not surprise me that he has been! detected>> "borrowing" - but is there a distinction to be made between plagiarism>> in academic work (i.e presenting others' work as one's own) which is>> rife among students these days (as Dr Gifford knows to his cost) and>> taking bits from others' books and putting them into one's novels and>> other imaginative fiction(as LD did , as we know, In Prospero's Cell>> (from Sophie Atkinson) and in Caesar's Vast Ghost (from...?).>> As far as plausibility is concerned, Marouchi would not be the only>> chancer, plagiarist and thief who has graced the Durrell School - some>> escaped detection at the time, others were so transparent as to defy>> arrest. Takes all sorts...>> RP>>>> _______________________________________________> ILDS mailing list> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds>------------------------------Message: 4Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 10:06:06 -0800From: James Gifford To: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de MenasceMessage-ID: <5682CB8E.9080305 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain;! charset=windows-1252; format=flowedOn 2015-12-28 10:35 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:> As to the ?of all people? characterization of Rex Warner on Michael> Haag?s blog, I?ll note that Warner was a well-known and highly> productive classicist from Oxford. Among his translations of Latin and> Greek authors was /Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War/> (1954), which became a bestseller for Penguin, over a million copies> sold. My first exposure to Thucydides was from Warner?s translation,> and I remember it fondlyFor what it's worth (and I think we've discussed this online before), Nessim's historical dreams are created out of Warner's translation of the Anabasis. Would Warner, whom Durrell knew, have seen this as theft or a tribute to his own excellent work? I suspect the latter, but I wonder if his library is extant and what marginalia might be in his copy of the Quartet.I recently acquired some of Rona Murray's Durrell books from her library, so the next time I'm in Victor! ia I plan to see what may be hiding in her papers... At the Louisville conference in February, I'll be talking about how H. D.'s readings in the Quartet shaped some of her interesting late work. > I would like to know what the committee at UNLV > meant by finding ?similarities with other works.? > I was recently talking to a law professor who > specializes in Intellectual Property, and she > mentioned (if I heard her right) that under U.S. > copyright law a writer?s words are protected but > not his/her ideas. I assume the people at UNLV > knew what they were doing and nailed Marrouchi > for pilfering the actual words of assorted > writers without proper accreditation. In this > regard, scholars are sometimes held to a higher > standard than creative writers.I'd imagine it was the issue of a "higher standard" rather than direct copying verbatim. If an academic rewrites an article's findings entirely in his or her own words (not plagiarism) but without attribution and claiming the ideas to be his or her own, it could certainly be understood as ! misconduct even if it's perfectly legal. My understanding is that in the USA there are elements of ideas that can be protected by copyright even if words are not directly stolen.As for copyright and plagiarism in academia, I'd imagine there would need to be some form of damages for such things to proceed to court, and given the context, I would think "damage" would be more likely to be demonstrated by the publishers than the authors of the original works. Can I sue over the French translation of /Pied Piper of Lovers/ copying from my editorial apparatus without attribution? Not likely since I don't earn anything from it...All best,James------------------------------Subject: Digest Footer_______________________________________________ILDS mailing listILDS at lists.uvic.cahttps://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds------------------------------End of ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 23*************************************-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 3Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 16:24:21 -0500From: William Apt To: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: [ilds] Fwd: PlagiarismMessage-ID: <707776B7-DD7D-40DA-86E5-1627E6A5B3A9 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"WILLIAM APTAttorney at Law812 San Antonio St, Ste 401Austin TX 78701512/708-8300512/708-8011 FAXBegin forwarded message:> From: Bruce Redwine > Date: December 29, 2015 at 12:47:00 PM EST> To: William Apt > Cc: Bruce Redwine > Subject: Re: Plagiarism> > Billy,> > Prospero?s Cell (1945) was written in Alexandria, and Durrell used a copy of Sophie Atkinson?s An Artist in Corfu (1911) as source material, probably to refresh his memory and to provide ?color.? But he did more than that?he also took her words, in snippets, to piece together his narrative. This plagiarism occurs in chapter VI: ?Landscape with Olive Trees.? Durrell cites Atkinson as ?S. Atkinson? in his ?Brief Bibliography in English,? but she is neither indexed nor referenced in the main story, as are the other authors listed. I would say Durrell disguised his debt to Atkinson. He probably thought he could get away with plagiarizing an obscure author and her book. The great poetry of Prospero, however, is Durrell?s own, although the events are sometimes invented, as Nancy Myers said.> > Near the beginning of Balthazar occurs Pursewarden?s ?melting mirage? recollection of approaching Alexandria from the sea. That passage is nearly lifted wholesale from R. Talbot Kelly?s Egypt Painted and Described (1902). Another obscure book. No accreditation given, as Durrell occasionally does elsewhere in the Quartet. Bill Godshalk pointed out this passage years ago in an essay on Durrell?s ?sources.? The poetic passage is very famous. If my memory is correct, it was used as a voice-over at the beginning of a documentary on Durrell?s return to Alex. In the film, Durrell sits and seems to think the words are his own. In this case, the great poetry is not Durrell?s.> > In Caesar?s Vast Ghost, Durrell took Michael Haag?s account of the Battle of Actium and used it, without accreditation, in chapter VIII: ?The Jealous God.?> > Some may say that these ?borrowings? are minor and that to call them examples of plagiarism is nitpicking. I don?t think so. I?m now suspicious of any passage in Durrell writings that has a scholarly ring to it, particularly those in Sicilian Carousel and Greek Islands. After all, in an interview, he said he ?burgled? other people?s ideas. He also ?burgled? their words.> > Send my reply onto the List, if you want.> > Happy New Year!> > Bruce> > > > > >> On Dec 29, 2015, at 4:58 AM, William Apt  wrote:>> >> Bruce: >> >> Prospero is one of my favorites. I'm disappointed to hear what you say. Without going to a lot of trouble, can you cite any specifics? Is the plagiarism widespread? I know that Caesar's Vast Ghost was problematic anyway, so what you say does not surprise me. I recall trying to read it and could not get through it because it seemed so cobbled together. And that was before I knew its history. >> >> WILLIAM APT>> Attorney at Law>> 812 San Antonio St, Ste 401>> Austin TX 78701>> 512/708-8300>> 512/708-8011 FAX> -------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 4Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 13:56:29 -0800From: James Gifford To: ilds at lists.uvic.caSubject: Re: [ilds] Nessim, Rex Warner, & George de MenasceMessage-ID: <5683018D.8000309 at gmail.com>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowedHi Bruce,On 2015-12-29 12:45 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:> This seems to> me defensive?driven by the lack of an> Oxbridge degree, which Warner had?I'd feel fairly certain of that! I'd go a bit further and say such defenses or anxieties are fairly common -- there's always someone carrying an elementary school grudge when you say you're a teacher, but the ferocity tends to increase when you're a professor. It's certainly not unique to Durrell, and all things considered, I don't think it's a major trait of his writing, though you're certainly right that it's there.> Lawrence Durrell was sometimes a ?mixer?> and may have been in the vanguard of a> new movement.I suppose I'm a good deal more forgiving of fiction than I am of academic work. I remember a review of the West Coast fantasy novelist David Eddings (whose late series The Dreamers takes its core structural trait from the Quartet) in which the reviewer complained "he wrote for money" -- well, authors do that... In theory, academics should not, or at least it should not be a motive.On 2015-12-29 1:24 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote: > I?m now suspicious of any passage in Durrell writings > that has a scholarly ring to it, particularly those > in /Sicilian Carousel/ and/ Greek Islands./ After > all, in an interview, he said he ?burgled? other > people?s ideas.It's worth adding that he did acknowledge burgling Stephanides' unpublished ms. on Corfu for /Greek Islands/ too, though "he wrote for money"... My impression was that Stephanides intended for Durrell to take freely whatever was useful.Haag has also raised the question of Claude's contributions (and Durrell's to her books). Eddings later added his wife's name to his books as co-author and commented they'd all really been joint projects -- Durrell could have been much the same. It's almost as awkward as sorting out who really wrote a film or TV script...All best,James------------------------------Message: 5Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 19:41:57 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: [ilds] CopyrightMessage-ID: <47CEE546-4EA4-47BE-B867-962D44CD7066 at earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"Copyright laws were mentioned when the issue of Durrell?s plagiarism was first raised many years ago. The point at that time was that Durrell was subject to them when he began lifting other people?s words. He was surely aware of the laws of British copyright, and I do not think Faber in 1945 would have taken kindly to Durrell?s misuse of Sophie Atkinson?s prose in her Artist in Corfu, which I believe was copyrighted, although I do not see any indication of such in her book. The copyright symbol ? may or may not have been required in 1911. (The 1945 first edition of Prospero?s Cell simply states, ?All rights reserved.?) The major point, I think, of this discussion is not plagiarism per se, rather to what extent it represents something basic about Durrell himself, to wit, his dismissal of the idea of Truth, his penchant for telling tall stories, and his belief in multiple selves (which seems to me anyway as an easy way to absolve one of responsibility for one?s own action! s).Bruce> On Dec 29, 2015, at 12:51 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org wrote:> > "students and some academics value career advancement over contributions to knowledge and nurturing learning. " - You bet they do, as I know very well. I have seen student essays in which the student, having lifted quotes from Wikipedia, didn't even bother to change the font!!! So much for intelligence, but (to be cynical) full marks for the effort to further their career. Since most academic work in the humanities at least, is paltry and contributes very little to knowledge or nurturing learning, it doesn't really matter whether or not they are cheating on each other - they haven't the spunk to cheat on each other in sexual matters, so they resort to doing it with other body parts - the body of the text organically transplanted fgrom one book to another. So much more cosy. Which in my experience is what a very high proportion of academics do too. Cheating doesn't stop when you get your BA or even your PhD. I have seen respectable books by academics anxious for "advanceme! nt" which show that their principal motive is NOT contributing to knowledge or nurturing learning - far from it, simply remarketing someone else's work as one's own. It can be done cleverly so that no-one notices. But all that relates to students and their teachers. What LD (and so many others) do is a completely different game. I'm reading Sisman's life of le Carre at present and it's clear that there are times when David Cornwell didn't know what le Carre was writing, or couldn't in his recollection distinguish between what "really" happened and what le Carre has written. And other times when he did know.> I think it's remarkable that this discussion (LD's plagiarism) has gone on for so long before anyone mentioned the words "copyright" or "intellectual property". The laws on copyright are so fexible and vague that anyone can run rings round them. And they do.> RP-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Message: 6Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 11:23:10 -0800From: Bruce Redwine To: James Gifford ,	James Gifford	Cc: Bruce Redwine Subject: Re: [ilds] Mustapha Marrouchi and Lawrence DurrellMessage-ID: <79894980-03E0-4268-8B64-DE154F005B91 at earthlink.net>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"Thanks, James. I see your point about Durrell?s method of composition in his latter years. I don?t agree with the direction he was heading, but this is my problem and not his. Then, I?m an old fogey, pace A. N. Wilson. I stand by, however, my contention that plagiarism is part and parcel of a bigger aspect of Durrell?s personality.As to the ?scenario? you describe below, I can well imagine Durrell doing just that. Namely, writing a travel book on Sicily or the Greek islands, sitting by his typewriter, and working off various pieces of scholarship and travel literature in order to fill in the blanks of his memory. It seems to me this is exactly what he was doing in parts of Prospero?s Cell. As is well known, the events in Sicilian Carousel are mostly fiction, delightful as they may be, and I don?t think Durrell in fact visited all the places he mentions in Greek Islands. Is this a big sin? Aside from the issue of plagiarism, it is probably not. Moreover, it is probably done all the time?inventing one?s travels. We can go all the way back to Mandeville?s Book of Marvels and Travels (c. 1350) and then to Steinbeck?s Travels with Charlie (1962). Both books contain much fiction. So, it can be argued that Durrell was simply following a ?Great Tradition.?As to academic publishing, you and Richard Pine have a good point. I recall one of my professors saying that most of what was being published was worthless, trash. Of course, that didn?t stop him from publishing and contributing to the problem. I have to confess that I like reading scholarship, even when I vehemently disagree with the academic, as I do with Edward W. Said.Bruce> On Dec 29, 2015, at 9:51 AM, James Gifford  wrote:> > Hi Bruce,> > As it happens, I'm going through Caesar's Vast Ghost fairly carefully just now -- I think some of the hints are in the references to "commonplace books." Durrell's project around this time in the Notebooks of Demonax suggest his move from the Quintet to a novel that works aphoristically. His method involved moving from his quarry books the novel by shoring up fragments (to borrow from one of those High Moderns). By the later parts of his career, I think he just wanted to let the fragments be on their own and leave the shoring to the reader. The rightly egregious theft from Haag in /Caesar/ strikes me as a product of his carelessness (and editorial help) in the process of moving from commonplace book to "book" book. He wasn't interested in it at that point, and informally some suggest it wasn't a book entirely of his own concoction too.> > I tend not to be as worried about things in the Quartet. The notebook method is the same, and I'm generally inclined to see it as allusive more than theft, although I understand your point. Students will often tell me they copied a quotation and then forgot it was a quotation while revising, mistaking it for their own writing -- when the student's writing is very weak and the quotation is excellent, I find that harder to believe, especially in a very short essay in which the thefts make up the majority of the work... For Durrell, looking at the notebooks, where the copied portions are more on the order of sentences rather than pages, the movement from commonplace book or quarry book to final novel strikes me as a combination of allusion and method. "Be ye part of one another" or books made up of spare parts. Kathy Acker made an art of it (including lifting from Durrell).> > What I don't see in Durrell is the scenario of setting a book beside his typewriter to lift passages into this novel draft... That looks a lot more like what Marrouchi appears to have done, or even more likely, cut & paste from the internet.> > Unfortunately, the instrumentalization of learning in the neoliberal university has prioritized advancement (the code word for endowment growth), and that makes students and some academics value career advancement over contributions to knowledge and nurturing learning. In the UK, the "productivity" measures even include how many times an article is cited as a measure for advancement -- yet citations saying "this article is rubbish" still count in that quantified measure, so being debunked extensively is a good career move! Happy, Canada and the USA haven't created such a national system (yet), but we have our own set of troubles in academia too.> > All best,> James> > On 2015-12-28 5:17 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:>> It takes all sorts, indeed. Durrell?s ?use? of his sources, if you>> will, has been discussed extensively on this listserv. Since it?s once>> again coming up, we can agree that there?s little, if any, agreement.>> My view is that Durrell plagiarized material in /Prospero?s Cell,>> Balthazar,/ and /Caesar?s Vast Ghost,/ to name only three egregious>> examples. He did this deliberately, in my opinion. I don?t know if he>> himself considered it a ?crime??that I doubt, for he seems to have>> forgotten what were actually his own words and what were someone else?s.>> I think, however, that had he been found out at the time he would have>> run into big problems with his publishers, Faber in particular. Why?>> Because there is a big difference between dropping witty allusions (?>> la the High Moderns) and the theft (in bits or chunks) of some other>> writer?s prose. It appears that Marrouchi indulged in the latter.>> Durrell?s practice is open to debate.>> >> Bruce>> >> >> >> >>> On Dec 28, 2015, at 12:47 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org>>> > wrote:>>> >>> Mustapha Marouchi certainly made a good impression when he attended>>> the Durrell School some years ago, but he did and does seem>>> "plausible" and it does not surprise me that he has been detected>>> "borrowing" - but is there a distinction to be made between plagiarism>>> in academic work (i.e presenting others' work as one's own) which is>>> rife among students these days (as Dr Gifford knows to his cost) and>>> taking bits from others' books and putting them into one's novels and>>> other imaginative fiction(as LD did , as we know, In Prospero's Cell>>> (from Sophie Atkinson) and in Caesar's Vast Ghost (from...?).>>> As far as plausibility is concerned, Marouchi would not be the only>>> chancer, plagiarist and thief who has graced the Durrell School - some>>> escaped detection at the time, others were so transparent as to defy>>> arrest. Takes all sorts...>>> RP>> -------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: ------------------------------Subject: Digest Footer_______________________________________________ILDS mailing listILDS at lists.uvic.cahttps://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds------------------------------End of ILDS Digest, Vol 104, Issue 24*************************************
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